Introduction

As a Solutions Consultant or Sales Engineer for a complex, enterprise product, it can be a challenge to show just the relevant parts of your product without showing confusing screens.

For many, it is easy to forget that the role of a Solutions Consultant is to move the opportunity to the next stage, rather than to teach stakeholders about your product. For that reason, we need to ensure demos are not tours of features and functions but instead demonstrating the value proposition of a solution.

In this article, I will introduce ZoomIt – the answer to the challenges of busy UIs. If you’d prefer to listen to the article, you can do so below.

The Challenge

The UIs of complex, enterprise applications are becoming increasingly ‘busy’ and this can make keeping your audience’s attention on the relevant area of the screen a challenge.

To try to solve these challenges, I used to take a screenshot of a product a put it into PowerPoint slide so I could grey out areas of the screen to ensure my audience would be focusing on the part I wanted them to. However, I found this to be very time consuming and it removed any agility from my presentations. With this method, I would have to know exactly what I was planning to show.

In addition to this, if you are showing a screen with a lot of data, it can be very difficult to read – especially when everyone is working from home and may not have the luxury of a large, second monitor.

With this in mind, I set about trying to find a solution. Part of the solution to this is very much Demo Video Automation. By delivering demo videos to clients, we have the luxury of being able to zoom in to elements of the screen and grey-out areas after the video has been recorded. However, there will always be a need for some real-time demonstrations.

This is there I came across a free tool called ZoomIt.

The Solution: ZoomIt

ZoomIt is a free, simple, lightweight piece of software which runs almost invisibly on your PC. It allows you to zoom on your screen and make annotations which is especially useful for technical demonstrations. The software runs unobtrusively in your system tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image.

Since discovery this useful tool, I have been using it on an almost-daily basis. I use it both for remote demos as well as (pre-pandemic) face-to-face presentations.

Here are the key functionalities:

1. Draw squares, lines, freeform (e.g. numbering), and arrows on any screen. Use keyboard shortcuts so it doesn’t detract from demonstration
2. Zoom into screen and still use it. e.g. you can still fill in a form while zoomed.
3. Type anywhere on your screen. Useful for brief explainers during a presentation.
4. White or black your screen. Especially useful if you want your audience’s attention back on your, rather than presenting a distracting screen.

Alternatives

An alternative to using ZoomIt would be to use the Logitech Spotlight – a presentation clicker/pointer on steroids. It too allows users to highlight portions of the screen or black out the entire screen to focus the audience’s attention.

It has its advantages too. It allows presenters to highlight areas of the screen while they are away from their mouse and keyboard while presenting. It gives a very slick finish to presentations, but lacks the option to use annotations.

I have numerous friends and colleagues who rave about the Logitech Spotlight. However, with a £120 / $165 retail price tag, I find it difficult to justify when when a free piece of software like ZoomIt has many of the same features.

Conclusion

Ultimately, presenting is all about communicating with your audience. Whether you opt for the premium clicker, or a free piece of software like ZoomIt, they are both going to improve your audience’s attention and your overall presentation.

Let me know in the comments below if you have any alternatives that you use. I’d love to hear about them!